The Iranian regime – second only to Turkey in imprisoning journalists last year, and identified by Freedom House as among “the worst of the worst” for press freedoms – widened its crackdown on reporters throughout this month. The Green Voice of Freedom, a site associated with the Green Movement that emerged...

The Palestinian Authority government is again facing criticism for suppressing civil liberties in the West Bank. David Keyes, executive director of Advancing Human Rights, has described the Western-backed government as becoming “worryingly similar” to the Iran-backed Hamas government in the Gaza Strip that “shuts down social media conferences, represses women, tortures dissidents...

Israel is the only Middle Eastern country to rate as “free,” according to the latest annual report by Freedom House, a top U.S.-based pro-democracy NGO. Israel is an anomaly in its region, with many of its neighbors receiving negative ratings, and Syria – until recently advocated by many foreign policy analysts...

A U.S.-based human rights organization is blasting Turkey for topping the list of countries where journalists are persecuted and imprisoned. The Committee to Protect Journalists also identified Iran and China as among those keeping behind bars a global total of 232 writers, editors, and photojournalists. The group reserved specific disapprobation...

The Turkish military over the weekend dispatched F-16s across the border into Iraq, bombing bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and killing five. The PKK – which is identified as a terrorist organization by the U.S., EU, and others – is locked in a decades-old war with Turkey, the...

The human rights situation in Egypt worsened over the weekend, with gunmen opening fire on the home of a Coptic Christian. A wave of similar attacks had forced the government to issue condemnations and assurances mere hours before the incident, with Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi promising to protect Christians. Coptic...